Patent Law, Copyright Law, and the Girl Germs Effect

[Excerpt] Inventors pursue patents and authors receive copyrights. No special education is required for either endeavor, and nothing precludes a person from being both an author and an inventor. Inventors working on patentable industrial projects geared toward commercial exploitation tend to be scientists or engineers. Authors, with the exception of those writing computer code, tend to be educated or trained in the creative arts, such as visual art, performance art, music, dance, acting, creative writing, film making, and architectural drawing. There is a well-warranted societal supposition that most of the inventors of patentable inventions are male. Assumptions about the genders of the authors of remunerative commercially exploited copyrights may be less rigid. Women authors are more broadly visible than women inventors across most of the typical categories of copyrightable works. Yet, whether one considers patentable inventions or copyrightable works, the vast majority of the very profitable ones are both originated and controlled by men. This causes a host of negative consequences for women. They start and run businesses at much lower rates than men and rarely reach elite leadership levels in the corporate world or within high-profile artistic or cultural communities. They are perceived as less competent, less dedicated, and less hard working, and suffer from a lack of female mentors and female colleagues. Women are lied to during financial negotiations more than men and earn less than men in equivalent positions. Women control only a tiny portion of the world’s wealth. Though female students outperform male students in almost every context and at almost every level of education, and even seek postdegree job-related training in greater numbers than men, this has not helped women to produce and control patentable inventions or to author and own valuable copyrighted works in numbers comparable to men

Explaining the First Industrial Revolution: Two Views

This review essay looks at the recent books on the British Industrial Revolution by Robert Allen and Joel Mokyr. Both writers seek to explain Britain’s primacy. This paper offers a critical but sympathetic account of the main arguments of the two authors considering both the economic logic and the empirical validity of their rival claims. In each case, the ideas are promising but the evidence base seems in need of further support. It may be that eventually these explanations for British economic leadership at the turn of the nineteenth century are recognized as complementary rather than competing.

Eldred v. Ashcroft: How Artists and Creators Finally Got Their Due

In regards to copyright the U.S. Constitution states: Congress shall have the power . . . to promote the Progress of Science and useful arts, by securing for limited times to authors and inventors the exclusive right to their respective writings and discoveries. The intellectual property clause was added to the Constitution because of the recognition of the importance of balancing both an author\u27s interest in protecting their creative works with the public interest in maintaining a method by which those same works could enter the public domain. However, the ability to properly perform this balancing act has proven more difficult than anyone could have expected. A recent Supreme Court case has tipped the scales and given artists and creators their just due

Eldred v. Ashcroft: How Artists and Creators Finally Got Their Due

In regards to copyright the U.S. Constitution states: Congress shall have the power . . . to promote the Progress of Science and useful arts, by securing for limited times to authors and inventors the exclusive right to their respective writings and discoveries. The intellectual property clause was added to the Constitution because of the recognition of the importance of balancing both an author\u27s interest in protecting their creative works with the public interest in maintaining a method by which those same works could enter the public domain. However, the ability to properly perform this balancing act has proven more difficult than anyone could have expected. A recent Supreme Court case has tipped the scales and given artists and creators their just due

The Ingenious Crowd�: A Critical Prosopography of British Inventors, 1650-1850

simulation, models

Lawyering Within the Domain of Expertise

This Article uses the history of patent prosecution to assess the relationship between the practice of law and the claim of an administrative agency to possess and to employ expertise

Sharing is caring vs. stealing is wrong: a moral argument for limiting copyright protection

Copyright is at the centre of both popular and academic debate. That emotions are running high is hardly surprising – copyright influences who contributes what to culture, how culture is used, and even the kind of persons we are and come to be. Consequentialist, Lockean, and personality interest accounts are generally advanced in the literature to morally justify copyright law. I argue that these approaches fail to ground extensive authorial rights in intellectual creations and that only a small subset of the rights accorded by copyright law is justified. The pared-down version of copyright that I defend consists of the right to attribution, the right to have one’s non-endorsement of modifications or uses of one’s work explicitly noted, and the right to a share of the profit resulting from the commercial uses of one’s work. I also cursorily explore whether contribution to another person’s work gives rise to moral interests

Harvesting the uncollected fruits of other people’s intellectual labour

Intellectual property regimes necessarily create artificial scarcity leading to wastage, both by blocking follow-up research and hindering access to those who are only able to pay less then the actual retail price. After revising the traditional arguments to hinder access to people’s intellectual labour we will examine why we should be more open to allow free-riding of inventive efforts, especially in cases where innovators have not secured the widest access to the fruits of their research and failed to cooperate with follow-up innovators. We will do so by questioning the voluntariness involved in consumption of objects of innovation, restating the positive social externalities that arise when wider access to the fruits of innovation is assured, and examining the eventual harms innovators face

Synaesthesia and the creative process: a study of its inspiration in Scriabin’s "Prometheus"

The role of synaesthesia in composition is difficult to assess, but for those who possess it synaesthesia is an inherent source of inspiration. It is not a compositional tool as such, yet synaesthesia is fundamental to the creative and compositional processes of certain artists. The term synaesthesia describes various multi-sensory experiences of artistic expression. Though many are riveted by synaesthesia, there is a lot of literature dismissing it as a gimmick used by artists and composers to increase their popularity among audiences. Synaesthesia, however, has been integral to the compositional processes of composers such as Olivier Messiean, Michael Torke and specifically Alexandre Scriabin. The pieces written by Scriabin were expressions of what he saw, tasted and felt when hearing music. There would not be a Prometheus: The Poem of Fire if Scriabin had not harnessed his synaesthesia to inform his compositional process. This paper will cover several topics in relation to synaesthesia. Firstly synaesthesia will be defined and its historical background will briefly be discussed. Information on academic interest and inventors will follow, shedding light on the research that has already been conducted in this field. This paper will then explore the impact that synaesthesia has on the artistic community and on the lives of particular composers; namely Michael Torke and Alexandre Scriabin. The second section will specifically cover Scriabin’s composition Prometheus. It will be analysed from a synaesthetic point of view, both from the author’s perspective and that of Scriabin, which will take the paper to its conclusion. This paper contributes to a developing academic sector that deals with synaesthesia and how it has been treated over time; with a view to explains its role and impact on musical composition